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This is what Sydney looked like this morning.


I'm surprised I didn't see a topic already about it here
This dust storm was also big enough to be seen from space.

Link to a story about it. Even has Godzilla photoshoped into it.

Apparently we are getting it again on Sunday...

Its a nuisance, but it looks pretty damn cool. I thought I was on Mars for a little while

Maybe I'll be awake for it this time, because it was gone by 10am here.

It wasn't AS bad here, but still pretty off. The 6 or 7 hours of pounding rain got rid of it though...

Awesome, It makes Sydney look like Mars.

Arrakis! He who controls the Spice, controls the universe!

I thought I saw some crazy sand storms in other deserts in the world but that color alone! Wow!

...and Gojira!!!!

It had to be blown in from the center of Australia as well

Driving to work this morning in all that was an interesting experience. It was just so... red. And then by 10am, once the sun was fully up, it was sepia toned.

Really odd morning. And what most people get was that it wasn't just like this in the city centre, or even in the surrounding suburbs - it was like this everywhere. I drove all around the North Shore area of Sydney today (one part on the way to work, and another part on the way home) and on the way home (long after the dust had settled/been blown away) you could see the red dust on the road. Every car in the carpark at work had a red tinge (some more than others). This was all across Sydney and the area surrounding Sydney even all the way to fething Newcastle, which is just amazing.


[EDIT]: Yeah, this is what my drive to work looked like:

n0t_u wrote:This is what Sydney looked like this morning.


I'm surprised I didn't see a topic already about it here
This dust storm was also big enough to be seen from space.

Link to a story about it. Even has Godzilla photoshoped into it.

So in other words you had a typical LA day?

Frazzled wrote:So in other words you had a typical LA day?

Well if you replace a natural occurrence that makes the area sorta reddish with an unnatural one that makes everything grey than, yes, it is just like that.

Ahtman wrote:

Frazzled wrote:So in other words you had a typical LA day?

Well if you replace a natural occurrence that makes the area sorta reddish with an unnatural one that makes everything grey than, yes, it is just like that.

Exactly. Unless you count all the fires of course. Woops I see I missed the smiley above. give me a sec.

Fire came within 200 feet of friend's house yesterday. Unfortunately for him they put it out.

Oh please Fraz. You do not have your entire city covered in red-dust by mid-morning.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Oh please Fraz. You do not have your entire city covered in red-dust by mid-morning.

More like clouds of rancid pollution in LA. Now in Houston, we occasionally get clouds of sulfuric acid, but thats completely different

(I like th Godzilla effect-'Ho Godzilla is attacking the city!!!')
Red dust looks way cool. I've been trhough a dust storm in Vegas once.
In Austin we have yellow dust in the form of cedar. freeking clouds of the stuff.

Well satellite photos show a dust storm that appears to be bigger than the UK. That's pretty scary.

Very cool. Whats the deal causing it? Not enough shrimp on the Barbie?

News said that is rasied the air polution level to 15,400. It get's to 300-500 during bush fire season, if there is a lot of fires and 200 is considered a dangerous level.

So yay 77 times higher than the ammount considered dangerous.

estimates showed the dust plume stretched 600km along the NSW coast from Sydney to the Queensland border today, dumping up to 75,000 tonnes of dust per hour into the Tasman Sea.

"It's travelled about 1500 kilometres to get to Sydney," Dr Leys said.

Chris Eiser, manager of atmospheric science at the department, said measurements taken in Sydney today showed the highest level of particle concentration on record.

A normal day would see around 10 micrograms of particles per cubic metre of air and a bushfire might generate 500 micrograms.

Today, levels soared to 15,400 micrograms per cubic metre of air at one location.

"During a dust storm, that's when we get our highest levels historically and this is the highest we've measured in Sydney," Mr Eiser said.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/indepth/sydney-dust-storm-pollution-record-worst/story-fn44v660-1225778795418


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Picture of the Dust storm before it reached Sydney. I'll see if I can find the one where it goes out to sea because that one was a fair bit bigger.

Frazzled wrote:Very cool. Whats the deal causing it? Not enough shrimp on the Barbie?

Wouldn't know. There's no radio on the Kangaroo I ride to work, so I didn't hear it on the news. And as we only get 20 minutes of electricity at work each day, we're not allowed to waste of on that new-fangle televisibox thingy that we just got (they told us the next one we get is gonna have a colour screen!!!).

*glares at Fraz*

I could start making jokes about dumb gun-toting redneck Americans... but I won't...

..surely the corks would help to...

How well does the city and its people cope with this sort of thing then ? Just minor delays and accidents whilst people soldier on regardless or is it a big old excuse for people to grab an extra day off work and so on ?

Trains and buses went on like normal and the boats were replaced by buses as well. Basically it was only minor delays as everyone just had to drive a vit slower. But for the people taking the train there would have been no difference, besides the sky looking like the world is ending.

Woooooah!

I hope you fitted sand filters to your cars.

The Radio 4 news said people were getting into breathing difficulties.

We see red dust in Tokyo and London sometimes, but it's just dirt not a complete blanket like that.

reds8n wrote:How well does the city and its people cope with this sort of thing then ? Just minor delays and accidents whilst people soldier on regardless or is it a big old excuse for people to grab an extra day off work and so on ?

People with asthma and breathing problems (like my boss) stayed home. Schools were open. Everyone just sorta went 'Ok, very strange, now let's move on' and things continued as normal. Only real changes were that all ferry services were cancelled (for most of the morning) and flights were diverted to other capital cities (or delayed/cancelled for one's leaving from Sydney). It honestly wasn't a huge deal as most people just stayed inside!

It was just a shock to see at first, and made driving more interesting.

@ Fraz

Here's a nice pic:



Now, I'm guessing that at it's widest we're looking at 1200-1500km across. The united Kingdom is 1100km long at its widest point, so, as I said, this is a dust storm larger than England, Scotland and Wales added together. That's big.

Everyone just sorta went 'Ok, very strange, now let's move on' and things continued as normal

This is more the Australian stereotype I like to think of.

I'm a little surprised they kept the schools open, but I guess if everyone else is going to work then they've got no choice.

Least you all got some cool pics out of it.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Very cool. Whats the deal causing it? Not enough shrimp on the Barbie?

Wouldn't know. There's no radio on the Kangaroo I ride to work, so I didn't hear it on the news. And as we only get 20 minutes of electricity at work each day, we're not allowed to waste of on that new-fangle televisibox thingy that we just got (they told us the next one we get is gonna have a colour screen!!!).

*glares at Fraz*

I could start making jokes about dumb gun-toting redneck Americans... but I won't...

Glares back. You're being way to serious. Its a joke. That phrase is like your tourist mantra and it utterly awesome.

Clearly your kangaroo ride is not calming in the morning. You should switch to Longhorns like we have here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jimi Nemesis wrote:@ Fraz

Darn, I can't open it.


Again, whats causing the storm?

When I woke up, just before 6am, I heard on the radio about the dust. I didn't think anything of it, and as I could hardly open my eyes yet, I didn't look out the window. Went to the bathroom, rubbing my eyes and getting used to the light, turned to the window (which is frosted glass) and just saw red - glowing red, like a fire.

I was shocked, to say the least.

Opened the window, and I couldn't see the trees on the other side of the train tracks that are a bit behind the apartment complex I'm in. It's less than 100 meters.

Fitting color for a country founded by convicts!

Looks cool but as a student pilot flying in that weather must be pretty crazy. Small planes were probably grounded during that gak.

Frazzled wrote:


Again, whats causing the storm?

Not global warming.

I suppose everyone'll be checking those air filters...

ZF-

Frazzled wrote:Again, whats causing the storm?

Some want to blame global warming. But, it's a combination of dry weather and strong wind. It was mentioned as happening fairly often in the news, it just very rarely makes it this far east. I guess there wasn't enough moisture in the air in it's path to stop it.